I recently went one on one with Cynthia Owyoung. Cynthia is the Vice President of Inclusion, Equity and Belonging at Robinhood and the author of the new book All Are Welcome: How to Build a Real Workplace Culture of Inclusion that Delivers Results.

Adam: Thanks again for taking the time to share your advice. First things first, though, I am sure readers would love to learn more about you. How did you get here? What experiences, failures, setbacks or challenges have been most instrumental to your growth?

Cynthia: I took a pretty circuitous route to get to this place in my career. I majored in psychology, marketing and finance in college, with the intention to go into the advertising industry. I ended up working at ad agencies for a decade doing consumer research and brand strategy. Then I decided to go to graduate school so I could start a nonprofit focused on supporting adults with developmental disabilities in the Asian community. This is because I have a brother with a disability and in Asian families like mine, disability is often looked upon with shame and I wanted to change that. But while I was in grad school, my brother gets laid off from the job he’d held for over a decade and I have an incredibly difficult time finding him another job. So I decide that I would rather open doors than have to be knocking on them. I ended up delaying my nonprofit plans and got a job as a diversity program manager inside a software company instead. Now, twenty years later, I’ve been fortunate enough to work in companies as varied as Yahoo and Charles Schwab, driving inclusion, culture and change initiatives. 

Adam: What do you hope readers take away from your new book?

Cynthia: The key message in the book is that we’ve got to do things differently than what we’ve done in the past otherwise we’ll never make progress in the diversity and inclusion of our organizations. What’s been done to date hasn’t changed the status quo. So we’ve got to experiment, be willing to put our foot in our mouth and fail, but also learn from those failures and keep going. Inaction or actions that make us feel better but don’t actually do anything meaningful are no longer acceptable. Employees, customers and shareholders are smarter than that and demanding more. It’s time for leaders to challenge themselves to make change real and I hope my book gives them the practical frameworks they need to get started.

Adam: How can leaders build a real workplace culture of inclusion that delivers results? 

Cynthia: They should read my book! Honestly, it goes into way more depth than I can in this interview but I’ll try to summarize at a really high level. Basically, they should stop treating diversity and inclusion as just about hiring. They should view this as a business issue that is causing their organizations to miss out on significant opportunities. They have to create awareness of the issue by educating their workforce on why it’s important, they have to set goals and be intentional about systematically addressing bias in all aspects of their operations, and they have to hold people accountable to driving progress. Doing all this is fraught with land mines of the legal and political variety, but if leaders can be courageous about examining their own biases and willingness to change, then they can set the right expectations in their organizations that will prompt a change to the status quo and result in a more engaged, more innovative and more financially successful organization backed up by dozens of research studies done over the past few decades. 

Adam: What do you believe are the defining qualities of an effective leader?

Cynthia: Effective leaders are inclusive leaders. They are leaders that have your back when you need it. And they are leaders who listen to and empower others. These are the things I find inspiring. When I look back at leaders whom I thought were amazing and would work for again and compare them to the leaders whom I would avoid like the plague, the biggest differentiator for me was how they empowered me to play a bigger game because I knew they would not let me fail. 

Adam: How can leaders and aspiring leaders take their leadership skills to the next level?

Cynthia: This is going to sound self-serving given what I do for a living, but I really do believe it’s true. If you want to take your leadership to the next level, you need to practice inclusive leadership skills. A good model to follow is Deloitte’s Six Traits of Inclusive Leadership. Be curious about others, especially people who are different from yourself. Develop your cultural intelligence to acknowledge and respect different cultural backgrounds. Collaborate with others and engage them in solving thorny issues. Commit to doing what it takes to ensure a diverse, inclusive and equitable workplace. Have the courage to challenge the status quo and take actions that may disrupt established power structures. Be cognizant of your own biases and act to mitigate them. When leaders do these things, their employees will do more than you can imagine. 

Adam: What are your three best tips applicable to entrepreneurs, executives and civic leaders? 

Cynthia:

1. Start with you. Recognize that how you lead has a trickle down effect to everyone around you. If you don’t role model building diverse teams, including different perspectives in decision making, and creating fair and equitable processes for employees, customers and other stakeholders, then you can’t expect to achieve that as an organization. 

2. Commit and follow through. Making progress in diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging means communicating your commitment to it openly and transparently as a first step, but you also have to follow through on your promises. You must own accountability for action and progress for your stakeholders to take this work seriously and to see real change start to happen. 

3. Create space for others. I’ve worked for a few leaders who were so focused on themselves, that they never really built a team, even though they had lots of people working for them. These leaders talked so much that they never listened to others and therefore missed critical perspectives to help make them more successful. Ask your stakeholders about their experiences and needs, and then make sure you address them. 

Adam: What is your best advice on building, leading and managing teams?

Cynthia: I think it’s really important to get to know your team on an individual level. The more you understand their unique personalities, motivations and situations, the more you’re able to modify your leadership to their unique needs and draw out the best in them. And you’re also better positioned to determine what gaps in perspectives you might have on your team that you need to fill to help make your team even more effective as you build it. This is why diversity and inclusion matter so much to effective team building. Whenever I build a team, there’s always more than one great candidate who can fill the role so it makes sense to ask who will add something that’s missing to the broader team that will help make the team better? So if I’ve got a couple of sales-oriented extraverts on my team already, I probably need to add an analytical introvert. And how I manage my team means balancing those different needs for connection and energy in different ways, like providing public or private recognition depending on their preferences.

Adam: What is the single best piece of advice you have ever received?

Cynthia: Ask for what you want. You have to advocate for yourself because no one else is going to do it for you. When I was younger, I thought that if I worked really hard, people would notice and I would be rewarded accordingly. I had no idea back then how people would assume that my not asking for a promotion meant I didn’t want one. I was talking to a colleague who did get a promotion and as we compared notes, she looked at me incredulously and said, "You didn't ask for a promotion?!" That seemed to be the only difference we could discern between the two of us. This was confirmed when I went to my manager and asked why I didn’t get a promotion, and they said they didn’t realize I wanted one. Ever since then, I have made sure my managers know my ambitions and how I need them to support me.


Adam Mendler is the CEO of The Veloz Group, where he co-founded and oversees ventures across a wide variety of industries. Adam is also the creator and host of the business and leadership podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, where he goes one on one with America's most successful people - Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal winning athletes, political and military leaders - for intimate half-hour conversations each week. Adam has written extensively on leadership, management, entrepreneurship, marketing and sales, having authored over 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc. and HuffPost, and has conducted more than 500 one on one interviews with America’s top leaders through his collective media projects. A top leadership speaker, Adam draws upon his insights building and leading businesses and interviewing hundreds of America's top leaders as a top keynote speaker to businesses, universities and non-profit organizations.

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